2017 City of Rochester Citizen Survey

The 2017 City of Rochester Citizen Survey provides the opinions of a sample of residents about the quality of life, service delivery, civic and community participation and unique issues of local interest. A periodic sounding of resident opinions offers staff, elected officials, and other stakeholders an opportunity to identify strengths and challenges within the community. These identified areas can then be used for planning purposes to sustain services and amenities for long term success.
The City received a tremendous level of support and recognition from its community, as the majority of surveyed topics received significantly positive ratings. Some areas were truly outstanding though; with 93% or more respondents rating the City “excellent” or “good” in the following categories:

Quality of life

Place to raise a family

Image and reputation

Feeling of safety during the day

Quality of parks

Maintenance of public parks and trees

Quality of rivers and trails

Appearance of Residential Neighborhoods

Physical appearance of the downtown area

Availability of public library services

Law enforcement services

Fire protection services

Even the comparatively low sections were rated more positively than not, as every single section saw more than 50% of respondents report that section as “excellent” or “good”. As a whole, residents responded with overwhelming positivity in regards to their City and the community that it provides. Eight out of ten respondents rated the overall direction of the City as “excellent” or “good”.

This survey was designed to draw comparisons to the past survey that the City participated in back in 2009. Of the 33 categories that were directly comparable, 19 of those sections received the same or higher percentage of "excellent" or "good" responses in 2017. This survey also provided respondents the opportunity to complete open-response sections for each of the 13 overarching categories, providing more in-depth information about how participants feel about their community.
With nearly 1,200 responses from every corner of our City, the 2017 Community Survey achieved a 3% margin of error at a 95% confidence level. This means that based on the significant number of responses that this survey received, we can be 95% confident that this sample represents the entire community within 3% for each individual question. The full report can be found through the following link.

If you have any questions or concerns please contact the City via e-mail at citymanager@rochestermi.org, or call the City at (248) 651-9061.